The following is the email that I sent to Laura Yuen in the aftermath
of the publication of her misguided “The kids are doing ‘new math,’ and maybe
that’s a good thing” (Star Tribune, Sunday, 7 April 2023). My response reviews the ineptitude and intellectual
corruption of mathematics education professors, campus embarrassments even
worse than education professors in general who have ruined generations of teachers
whom they have ill-trained and who are therefore responsible for the student
mathematic proficiency rates given in my communication.
April 11, 2023
Laura---
Attached to this email is a copy of my 562-page book on the Minneapolis
Public Schools (Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools: Current Conditions, Future Prospect) the
result of nine years of research into the functioning of this particular
iteration of the locally centralized school district.
The book is structured in three parts:
Part One, Facts (approximately 300 single-spaced pages, objectively covering
every facet of the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS); Part Two, Analysis (approximately 100
single-spaced pages, analyzing the data from Part One and all manner of
component parts of the education establishment at the national, state, and
local levels); and Part Three
(approximately 100 single-spaced pages, giving a concisely comprehensive
overview of the history and philosophy of public education in the United
States.
I do not as a rule find journalists to be very responsible with regard
to those matters about which they write that require extensive reading and
research before presentation to the public as articles, columns, editorials, or
opinion pieces. I write this note to you
in the hope that you are one of the exceptions and will in the course of such reading
and research come to understand the philosophical and historical context in
which the material that you presented in your Star Tribune article of 9
April 2023, “The kids are doing ‘new math,’ and maybe that’s a good thing,”
should be understood.
I have been a teacher of students at the urban core for 52 years and
currently undo on a daily basis the damage the education professors of done
with their anti-knowledge ideology and their irresponsible approaches to
reading and mathematics instruction.
Young people move from grade 5 with little subject area (history,
geography, economics, natural science) knowledge, very little grasp of mathematics fundamentals, and lacking the
broad knowledge and sophistication of vocabulary necessary to be good readers
in middle and high school. Middle school
is not much better, and in high school the only hope is to take Advanced
Placement courses and hope beyond hope that teachers are actually knowledgeable
enough to teach material at that level of rigor. Most students walk across the stage at
graduation to collect a piece of paper that is a diploma in name only. One-third of graduates who go on to
matriculate at a four-year college or a university are so ill-prepared that they
must take remedial courses.
Education professors are objectionable generally and mathematics
education professors are objectionable particularly.
Both have ruined generations of students with their putatively
“progressive” approaches to education, an outrageous misnomer to which I, as a
leftist, take great umbrage, inasmuch as these campus embarrassments have
espoused dogmas that have had disastrous consequences for poor children living
at the urban core.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………….
In the New Salem Education Initiative, a North Minneapolis college
preparatory that I established 30 years ago, I daily am called upon by parents
to undo the damage that education professors and their public education teacher
and administrator acolytes have done.
With regard specifically to mathematics, students into high school
frequently do not know their multiplication facts, cannot do division (either
the “partial sums” variety you described in your article or the more direct
approach to which you also referred), cannot reduce or simplify fractions, and
have little grasp of decimals, percentages, ratios, or proportions. This seriously inhibits ability to master
either the concrete or abstract concepts necessary to thrive in algebra I,
geometry, algebra II, FST (functions, statistics, and trigonometry), and
calculus--- all of which I teach,
getting students through a recovery period and onto a viable track for success
in high school and university mathematics.
I am a great believer in the public schools but never trusted the
public schools to give my son his education.
He attended public school for socialization and a modicum of education,
but he got most of his education from me.
He was reading both Shakespeare and August Wilson; and performing simultaneous equations (advanced
algebraic operations); by the time he
was in the third grade.
Ryan (my son) and I always noted how little there is of mathematics to
learn, and thus how lamentable the fear and ineptitude that attend instruction
and student comprehension.
The necessary sequence is addition, subtraction, multiplication,
division, fractions, decimals, percentages, ratios, proportions, simple
probability, tables and graphs; on that
foundation, a student proceeds to algebra I, geometry, algebra II,
trigonometry, statistics, and calculus.
Students should move through the preparatory stage of the first sequence
as efficiently and rapidly as possible, then progress to the more abstract
courses in high school upon a strong foundation of fundamentals.
Many mathematics education (as opposed to mathematics) professors are
not themselves adept mathematicians.
They pretend to be grand philosophers developing deep-think,
metacognitive abilities in students. But
notice that they do so only at the level of very rudimentary math, arithmetic
mostly; the reality is that mathematics
education professors never exercise their pretenses upon students taking
algebra I, geometry, algebra II, trigonometry, statistics, and calculus:
This would be both unadvisable and beyond their ability.
………………………………………………………………………………
Please consider the damage that mathematics professors have done, as
told in the results from Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments (MCAs) from the
academic years ending in 2018 through 2022.
Then please give me a call or send me an email to agree on a time for
you to come to New Salem to discuss with me the results and implications of my
research.
I am struck at the lack of intellectual curiosity and desire for
accuracy on the part of writers at the Star Tribune, and the reticence
to go beyond interviews with public education establishment figures who have
given us the results that we witness year after year.
Perhaps you will be the exception.
Perpend >>>>>
Minneapolis Public Schools
(Ed Graff, Superintendent [July
2016-June 2022])
2018 2019
2020 2021 2022
(N/A)
Reading 45.1% 46.9%
------- 45.9% 34.8%
Mathematics 42.3%
32.0% ------- 35.5%
33.1%
Science 34.3% 36.6%
------- 36.5% 33.4%
St. Paul Public Schools
(Joe Gothard, Superintendent)
2018 2019
2020 2021 2022
(N/A)
Reading 38.4% 39.5%
------- 33.3% 34.8%
Mathematics 32.8%
32.0% ------- 21.4%
25.2%
Science 29.8% 29.1%
------- 23.7% 25.1%
Anoka-Hennepin Public Schools
(David Law, Superintendent
[through June 2022)
2018 2019
2020 2021 2022
(N/A)
Reading 65.4% 65.1%
------- 55.5% 54.9%
Mathematics 64.6%
63.5% ------- 48.8%
52.4%
Science 61.4% 60.0%
------- 47.1% 43.2%
Osseo Public Schools
(Corey McIntyre, Superintendent)
2018 2019
2020 2021 2022
(N/A)
Reading 56.2% 55.0%
------- 50.7% 49.5%
Mathematics 52.6%
49.3% ------- 41.9%
41.7%
Science 43.4% 40.9%
------- 38.8% 34.5%
Fridley Public Schools
(Kim Hiel, Superintendent)
2018 2019
2020 2021 2022
(N/A)
Reading 44.8% 44.3%
------- 34.6% 32.5%
Mathematics 41.8%
37.8% ------- 27.3%
21.5%
Science 30.4% 24.0%
------- 19.4% 17.1%
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Be
well—
With
best regards---
Gary
Gary Marvin Davison, Ph.D.
Director, New Salem Educational
Initiative
2507 Bryant Ave North
Minneapolis
MN 55411
http://www.newsalemeducation.blogspot.com
Author,
Understanding the Minneapolis
Public Schools: Current Gary Condition, Future Prospect (New Salem
Educational Initiative, second edition, 2023)
Foundations of an Excellent
Liberal Arts Education (New Salem Educational Initiative, 2022)
A Concise History of African
America (Seaburn,
2004)
The State of African Americans
in Minnesota 2004 (Minneapolis Urban League, 2004)
The State of African Americans
in Minnesota 2008 (Minneapolis
Urban League, 2008)
A Short History of Taiwan:
The Case for Independence (Praeger, 2003)
Tales from the Taiwanese (Libraries Unlimited, 2004)
Culture and Customs of Taiwan ([with Barbara E. Reed]
Greenwood, 1998)
